00:00 You only have to walk around the supermarket aisles and have a look on the shelves to know
00:07 that food and grocery prices have gone through the roof in recent times in Australia.
00:12 And at the same time, you've got the major supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, making
00:17 billions of dollars in profits.
00:19 Now millions of Australians are struggling to make ends meet and having to make difficult
00:25 decisions around whether they're going to put food on the table for their kids, whether
00:28 they're going to pay their power bills or their school levies.
00:31 And we think there's a prima facie case that the concentration of market power in the supermarket
00:38 sector is such that Coles and Woolworths are able to raise their prices over and above
00:46 any increases in the cost of supply to them.
00:49 And we need to use this inquiry to find a way to make food and groceries more affordable
00:54 in Australia.
00:55 The evidence is simply prima facie that when you look at the food prices, they appear in
01:02 many, many cases across a range of foods and a range of groceries to have increased far
01:09 ahead of inflation.
01:11 We want to use this inquiry to examine the price setting practices of Coles and Woolworths.
01:17 We want to use this inquiry to deliver greater transparency around the supply side.
01:22 In other words, how and how much they pay for the goods and services, the goods that
01:28 they then sell to Australians.
01:30 And we want to understand the impact that the concentration of market power in this
01:36 sector, which is extraordinary, has because ultimately competition is one thing that can
01:42 bring prices down, but there is a massive lack of competition, particularly in rural
01:49 and regional Australia, where often you're either shopping at one of the big two major
01:54 supermarkets or you're shopping at the corner shop and there's not much in between.
01:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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